Mark Watson is the Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He has been a long-term consultant in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond from 1996 to 2009 and since 2013. 

Watson is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Institute of Forecasters, and the International Association of Applied Econometrics. He has been a member of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee since 2009.

Watson's research spans the fields of econometrics and macroeconomics. He has worked on topics such as the analysis of large data sets, persistent time series, spatial data, and business cycles. He has collaborated with Richmond Fed economists Andreas Hornstein and Pierre-Daniel Sarte.